


Control

by Defira



Series: In Her Shadows [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Old Republic
Genre: Child Soldier, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Sith Academy, Sith Warrior - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-11
Updated: 2012-10-11
Packaged: 2017-11-16 02:21:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defira/pseuds/Defira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A prelude to the Sith Warrior storyline, a child is moulded into the perfect warrior. Through violence, isolation and manipulation, a powerful young girl is shaped for unknown purposes, by an unknown master. </p><p>Trigger warning: mild depictions of violence against a child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Control

Her earliest memories are of blood. One, two, three- three drops, little flowers of red blooming against the crisp white of whatever garment it was she wore. She couldn’t remember now; it hardly mattered. She held out her hand, and the next drop fell against her palm, the red spidering out through the little creases in the skin.

She had been crying. 

She could have only been three, four at the most. 

_Stop crying,_ is the harsh command. Was it male or female speaking? She couldn’t even remember. Only the cold dispassion with which they spoke, the hand on her shoulder dragging her back upright. _Stop crying, begin again._

She doesn’t want to begin again. She wants to play. She wants to sleep. But the hand is insistent, the voice is insistent- _begin again_ \- and she starts to cry.

The slap is sharp, and her head jerks backwards from the blow. There is blood in her mouth, and it dribbles down her chin. 

One, two, three.

Three little flowers, and a spider in her hand. 

_Control yourself,_ comes the voice again, cold and hard and angry. 

She clenches her hand, and stops crying for now. 

***

“Recite the battles of the Old Sith Wars, in chronological order, stating any significant casualties or outcomes from each battle.”

She is eight, according to her tutors. She knows that means she has lived through eight rotations of the planet around the sun- but she does not know which planet she is upon. She has seen star charts, and grasped their meaning, but she cannot put her finger to the coloured dot that is home. 

She takes a deep breath. “Great Droid Revolution, Coruscant, opening volley in the war.” Her tutor is not watching her, eyes idly flicking over a data pad instead. She does not like him, he is her least favourite tutor so far. But he will be gone in another three months- she never has a tutor for more than six months. Not even the servants stay for that long. 

“Quesaya Border Conflict, Quesaya.”

She watches her pronunciation, and drones through the list. Outside she can hear the gentle patter of rain, fat raindrops turning the yard to mud yet again. It has been raining for days, and soon she will be forced out into the downpour, into the mud, because as long as she is not dead, she can still move and she can still learn.

“Devastation of Ambria.”

Her tutor continues to read, clearly uninterested. 

She wonders which planet might be home.

***

She dodges out of the way of the incoming vibroblade, and lands badly. A sharp pain lances through her ankle, and she crumples, biting her lip to keep from crying out. She has learned not to cry out. The last time she cried, her rib cracked from a powerful kick, they broke her arm to teach her the penalty for weakness. 

Weakness begets failure, and failure begets pain- she knows that intimately. She has learned that the hard way. 

It is of the utmost importance that she control herself. She climbs to her feet, refusing to favour the bad foot. 

Mastery of self. Her mantra.

She is twelve.

***

She guesses from the architecture that she might be on Dromund Kaas. It is her latest theory in a lifetime of mystery, comparing the clean lines and the curved edges of the house to the few pictures she is able to pull up on her data pad. But Dromund Kaas is plagued by storms, and the air is thick and humid from the jungle. The air here is cold and dry, mostly. The storms come, and the dust turns to mud, and the plants in the yard welcome them. She is not sure what lies beyond the walls of the yard, whether it is desert or jungle or city or marsh. 

She tried to look once, when she was ten. 

She has not tried again. 

Lightning does not come easily to her. Other aspects of the Force she has mastered, coming as naturally to her as breathing. But it has been over a year, with numerous teachers, and the sparks fizzle intermittently from her fingertips, or not at all. 

She can feel it in her blood, feel that hiss and sizzle of power, but she cannot wield it the way they want her to. Frustration wells in her, and she’s supposed to be studying politics. The room is silent- they’ve long trusted her to comply with the scheduling of her teaching, and the lack of noise just aggravates her more. 

In annoyance, she snarls and pushes her hair away from her face, and feels the spark. Excitement flows instead, because this _feels_ different, and she tries to channel it, tries to control it, tries to let it flow-

She is sixteen, and her first and only attempt at using the Force to cast lightning nearly destroys her. She keeps her hair short after that, except for the fringe she wears to hide the scars. 

She will never be rid of them. Her shame, on display for all to see- her failure. Failure begets pain, this she knows. 

And so she seeks to master herself further. 

***

“What is your name?”

She stares forward, hands clasped before her. “I am Tahrin, of Dara.”

“Explain yourself.”

“I have to journey to Korriban, to the Sith Academy, to take my rightful place as an Apprentice to a Sith Lord.” She feels a swell of fierce pride, arrogance burning through her.

Her latest tutor paces slowly in front of her, an old pureblood whose eyes are crinkled with corruption and hate. “There will be others there,” he says, “rivals.”

“They are weak.”

“They are powerful. They would not have survived at the Academy if they were not.”

“I am stronger.”

“Are you?” He stops before her, a look of disdain on his face. “You are old for an acolyte; most make their way to the Academy in their teens, at the latest.”

She continues to stare straight ahead, not meeting his gaze. She knows better than to meet their eyes; she is not their equal. “I am stronger,” she repeats, knowing it in her heart.

He snorts unkindly. “Time will tell,” he says. He steps back, surveys her head to foot. He makes a noise that could be considered approval. “Well, Tahrin Dara. You may collect your bag and head for the yard- there is a shuttle waiting to take you to the space port.”

For a moment her heart leaps, because this means outside the walls. She had almost believed this to be a cruel jest on their part, a temptation hung just out of reach- the promise of the Academy, of power and of glory. Freedom to prove her complete mastery of herself. But she knows better than to show excitement, so she schools her features and nods once. “Yes, master,” she says.

She turns to leave. “Tahrin,” he says, and something in his voice sets her hair on end. She pauses dutifully, and does not let her fear show. “Do not fail us, child.”

She nods again, tersely. “I will not,” she says. Failure begets pain. She will not fail. 

“We have paid a lot of money to the Overseer to take you on so abruptly,” he says, coming in close to her. She does not flinch away, though she wants to. He is far too close, and she can feel the crackle of power radiating around him. She can feel his body heat. She can feel his breath. 

She despises him. 

“I will make you proud,” she says stiffly. 

She is twenty two, and the windows of the shuttle are blacked out. She cannot see the landscape as it rushes past, as she speeds towards the space port. Towards an uncertain future, in a suddenly boundless universe. She is used to walls and discipline and structure- the future holds the opposite of that. She does not know where she is, or who she is. But she has a name, and a purpose. 

She is Tahrin Dara, and she will be a Sith Lord. Of this, she is certain.


End file.
